Equestrian Speed Training: Advanced Pole Bending

Video Transcript

"We're going to go ahead now and take this horse through the entire pattern. As we jog him through, picking up the pace just a little bit, to kind of check his aptitude, to see how well does he do. As we know everything we do at the walk, we can do at the jog. So, we see this horse nicely bending through the poles, moving off of the riders leg pressure, as he does move away from pressure. I like to keep my leg on the horse all the way through until I've passed the pole, by keeping my leg on the horse, I'm going to insure that he's not going to want to drop that shoulder, and lean into the pole, which will subsequently knock it down. We want to be accurate now at the very end of the pattern where we have a good turn. If you can put the pieces together and make that turn a nice pivot so that this horse is handy on his hind quarter, sitting back on his haunches, you're going to have the neatest, tidiest turn which will result in the quickest time. The pole pattern is that we gallop down along side the poles in a straightaway, make that handy turn at the end, weave the poles this way, weave them away from us, going the opposite way, and then we gallop back. That's going to start you on one side, and finish you on the other. It's a series of six poles, spaced evenly apart. I like to set them at twenty for my practice, and making sure that their nice and straight so the horse gets an accurate opinion of what this pattern requires. So, we're going to let this rider now, take this horse through an entire pattern as she goes to the lope. So, Laura if you want to begin in the proper pattern, and we're going to take it to a lope now. Going straight down the side, weaving back and forth, and then coming back. Again, we're not looking for extreme speed, we're just allowing this horse to pick up the pace. Our rider could be a little bit closer to the poles as she begins, and then put just a little bit handier turn down at the bottom. But, this is our opportunity as a new rider to learn how to correctly do the pole bending. So, now we get a good pivot, and unfortunately he got a little disorganized, that's how we figure out what pieces do we need to work on and correct. So we can see where a properly done pivot, not letting him drop his shoulder into that pole, would have brought this rider. And, you're off course, that's alright. That's what new riders do, we go off course. So, we're going to take this back and try again."